24-03-09 PHOTOS: Power Director Office Powered Up

In the spring of 2024 it had been over a year since I had been able to get out to the Harrisburg Power Director's office, which had been between 1939 and 2013 in service to manage to manage the PRR's western traction power network. In 2022 the office had been taken over by the Harrisburg Chapter NRHS as an adjunct to their operation at HARRIS tower, however due to staffing considerations it is open much less frequently. The first time I had been there, pretty much only the room lights were functioning with the Big Board and control consoles all dark and lifeless. However in the 18 months since that first visit, the team of volunteers had managed to reactivate a substantial portion of the equipment and today's photos ( mirror ) will cover both the trains passing by on the adjacent Harrisburg Lines and the condition of the power office, with a few surprises mixed in.

The occasion of this Power Office open house was the train show the Harrisburg Chapter organizes in March of each year. Although HARRIS tower has ample free weekend parking, the power office is located inside the current Amtrak station and does not. Therefore, despite the drizzle, I parked at HARRIS to walk over. This put me in the position to catch a westbound NS doublestack intermodal train lead by SD70ACC #1850 and AC44C6M #4012.

Due to the train show, the power office saw healthy crowds all day.

The biggest change since 2022 was that the status lamps on the Big Board were now all lit.

However the more surprising development was that some of the SCADA panels had also been activated.

By "activated" I don't mean that the lamps had been turned on, but that the elements that drive the lamps and respond to the switches had also been restored to functionality. The office contains banks of relays that store state from the field equipment and encode/decode messages to/from said equipment. While the real field equipment no longer exists, the chapter volunteers were able to replace it with virtual equipment run off an Arduino type setup.

As of the spring of 2024, only the Westinghouse supplied "Visicode" equipment had been reactivated as its pulse code communications protocol was both dead simple and easy to reverse engineer. What makes this restoration extra surprising is that most of the Westinghouse consoles had been deactivated around 1983 when Conrail threw in the towel on electrified operations, as opposed to 2013 when Amtrak replaced its portion.

I'll probably write up a much more detailed post about this equipment on my dedicated signaling blog, but for a quick summary, the consoles function by first pulling a knob to select a module. This is sort of like taking a phone off hook and results in the back end relays taking action to accept the command. One then moves the switch to the desired position, activating the "out of correspondence" light. Then one chooses "Master Trip" or "Master Close" depending on the action and the message is coded out to the field equipment. If that didn't make sense, hopefully this video can make things clearer. 

24-02-29 PHOTOS: Leap Day

It's not every day I get to use transit for work related purposes and its not every year that February has 29 days, but in 2024 both happened at the same time and the net result was that I wound up with a few extra DC Metro photos. Also included in this set ( mirror ) are some pics of the SEPTA Saxer Avenue station on the Route 101 Media suburban trolley.

I had to go to an event near the DC Metro Wiehle-Reston station that I had previously visited as part of the Silver Line phase 1 and 2 opening day festivities in 2014 and 2022 respectively.

As predicted, the new Metro station has brought a large amount of Transit Oriented Development to the area, generating both inbound and outbound passenger traffic.

The east end of the platform still has issues with restricted sight lines, as seen here with 7k car #7374.

Although the Silver Line was built to support speeds up to 75mph with cab signal codes to match, the scheduled speeds enforced by the ATO system max out at 55mph, resulting in transit once again getting passed by private motor vehicles on the adjacent Dulles Toll Road.

Here is some cab facing video I managed to shoot between Wiehle-Reston and East Falls Church.





For some reason on my return trip I had to make a double backtrack, changing from Silver to Blue at Roslyn and then Blue to Yellow at Pentagon. Both are dual level stations to make room for the adjacent flying junctions. Here we are on the Roslyn upper level looking down at 3k car #3100 on the lower followed by a 7k train.

Here are some videos of the split level action at Roslyn.





View down the deep bore Blue/Orange/Silver line tunnel east of Roslyn heading under the Potomac River.

Between Roslyn and Pentagon I took a headway at the open air Arlington Cemetery station where a departing eastbound Blue Line train put on a rather impressive light show.

Upper level of the Pentagon station looking down the platform and into the tunnel at the junction between the Yellow and Blue lines.

7k car #7704 on the Pentagon lower level platform as seen from the upper level platform.

Mars Light equipped MARC bi-level kab kars #7852 and #7846 at Union Station.



Jump cut to Suburban Philadelphia we find the Saxer Ave station on the SEPTA Route 101 trolley complete with its vintage stone passenger shelter.

The station is adjacent to one of the two aspect Stop-Go block signals on the Route 101/102 network.

Unfortunately the Route 101 had been bustituted that weekend so the only train to be seen was this vintage HO model of Conrail bicentennial GG1 #4800 at the house where I was helping to move a Seaborg RD 100 jukebox.

That's all the photos from today's leap day. I'll hopefully see you back in four years with more.

24-02-24 PHOTOS: Croton-Harmon

In recent years where I have found myself with expiring Amtrak Companion Coupons I wind up hastily arranging an Amtrak trip with whichever friend will put up with me to whichever destination we can cram into a single day. In 2024 figured I had never taken the opportunity to poke around the Croton-Harmon Metro North station and with Amtrak stopping there it seemed like a pretty good choice of destination. You can view the entire set of photos here ( mirror ).

With an early AM departure from Baltimore, I wasn't really awake enough for photos until I hit Penn Station and was in the process of connecting to an Empire Service train to Croton-Harmon. Power on my train that day was P32AC-DM #712, which was situated next to NJT ML cab car #7019 and across from ALP-46 #4659.

About 40 minutes later our Empire train #281 had deposited us a Croton and continued on to Albany and Niagara Falls.

Croton-Harmon marked the northern extent of electrified service under the New York Central and featured both a yard and shoppe facilities for both the electric locomotives and MU's. All through passenger service would undergo a power change at Croton until the availability of FL9 dual mode engines from the New Haven RR rendered the practice unnecessary in the mid-1970's. A vestige of these 20th century operations can be seen in the presence of a main line double slip ladder connecting the northern end of the station platforms to the ready service MU yard.

The ready service yard had a representative mix of M7A and 1983 vintage Budd M3A MU equipment.

The NY Central era HM (HarMon) tower still has been repurposed, sporting both new windows and Mets fans.

A GCT bound train from Poughkeepsie was next to arrive with Shoreliner cab car #6125 leading and New Haven P32AC-DM #231 pushing.

24-02-16 PHOTOS: Rinky Dinky

Most years I travel up to Princeton to watch them play the RPI Engineers in NCAA D-I Hockey. This usually results in some photos at the NJT Princeton Station which is directly adjacent to Princeton's Hobey Baker ice rink. Since that's not a lot of content on its own, I have also included some Philly area transit photos taken over the remainder of the weekend. You can find the full gallery here ( mirror ).

That night single car Arrow III #1309 was performing in the role of the "Dinky", shuttling back and forth to the Princeton Jct NEC station every 20 minutes or so. Not going to lie, the service could probably be more frequent s there was a lot of layover time.

Although there are many detractors, the new Princeton station location is quite nice with an attached Wawa that seemed to be pretty busy and is frequented by both students and local residents.

I also remembered to get some video of the Dinky's comings and goings.





After the surprising RPI win, I went back to South Jersey I caught a northbound Atlantic City Line train running along the PATCO right of way at Wheeler Park in Haddonfield with NJT GP40PH-2B #4209 and Comet V cab car #6025.

PATCO rebuild car #1049 crossing Upland Way.

Here a southbound Atlantic City Line train runs through the Haddonfield trench with comet V cab car #6078 and GP40PH-2B #4203 and tries to catch up with an eastbound PATCO local that departs slightly ahead of it at the Haddonfield station. While the PATCO MU's can quickly accelerate to 65mph and aren't subject to the 30mph speed restriction of the Haddonfield Trench, the ACL will be good for 80mph and lack the stops at Westmont and Ashland which will create a very competitive race to Lindenwold.

A more competitive version of the previous video, we have another southbound NJT Atlantic City Line train with our friends Comet V cab car #6025 and GP40PH-2B #4209 trying to catch up with an eastbound PATCO local at night.



Rebuilt PATCO car #1091 at 8th and Market.

SEPTA Silverliners V #713 and #883 at 30th St Station.

Back down in Maryland the MARC Camden line is the rare peak period operation with trains in both directions. When the Camden Line is running close to schedule, eastbound and westbound trains can pass each other at the Dorsey station around 6:35pm. Here the DC-bound train arrives first led by single level cab car #7758 and a Clear signal displayed on the westbound track #1 signal. While it is completing its station work, the Baltimore-bound train arrives with MP36PH-3 #18 leading and multilevel cab car #8046. In order to prevent getting hemmed in by existing passengers, the westbound immediately departed with MP36PH-3 #10 pushing hard from behind.



The Baltimore train after the departure of the DC train.

I'll wrap things up with a short video of an early am northbound Acela Express trainset blasting through the BWI airport station on the center express track.



Next time I'll be headed back up north to grab some photos at Croton-Harmon.